ktravula – a travelogue!

Browsing the archives for the Academic category.

Pan-Atlantic University Introduces Undergraduate Courses

A few days ago, the Pan-Atlantic University, Nigeria, (formerly known as the Pan-African University) had a press conference to announce the introduction of three undergraduate courses into its school system from 2014. The event took place at the Victoria Island campus of the school, and was open to the press and other invited guests.

Present at the event representing the school were Mrs. Rosemary Okolo (Registrar), Dr. Chidi Nwagu (Manager, External Relations), Professor Emevwo A. Biakolo (Dean of the School of Media and Communication), and Professor Chantal Epie, the Deputy Deal of the School of Business Administration.

Pr-1

According to a press release given at the event, the Pan Atlantic University has been a graduate university for eleven years, offering postgraduate programmes exclusively. Now, it intends to extend its activities to eventually become a full-service university that will also offer first-degree programmes. For now, the three new initial courses are in professional fields: business and mass communication. They are B.Sc in Mass Communication, B.Sc in Business Administration, and B.Sc in Accounting. In 2015, the school hopes to include three new programmes: Masters degree in Film Making, B.Sc. Mass Communication (with options), and B.Sc. in Information Science and Media Studies.

The University boasts of international relationships with many universities around the world, like the University of Central Lancashire, University of London, University of Portsmouth, University of Navarra, as well as organizations like the Guaranty Trust Bank, Gesellschaft fur Konsumforschung (GFK), the USA Chambers of Commerce, and the Nigerian Guild of Editors, among others, and currently offers training in Written and Spoken Communication, Digital Media and Communication, Relationship Management, Development Communication, Corporate Affairs, Community Relations, Photography, Film and Entertainment, Animation, Media Business and Enterprise Management, Research, Multimedia Journalism, Radio and Television, and Internet and Online Studies.

More here.

_____________

CORRECTION: The earlier version of this post lists the three new undergraduate courses as B.Sc in Banking and Finance, Industrial Relations and Personnel Management, and Marketing. Mistake has been fixed. The error is regretted.

_____________

Photos by KTravula.

Check Yourself! Introducing a Homophone Checker

My friend, Jason Braun, has launched the world’s first free Homophone Checker app at Homophonecheck.com!

According to the press release, it is a free web app that allows writers to quickly proofread for errors that word-processing software typically skips over.

homophone-2

“Writers copy text and paste it into the homophone checker. Then 40 of the most commonly confused homophones–words that sound the same but are spelled differently– are highlighted automatically. When writers move their cursor over the highlighted homophones, a box pops up showing each possible word, its part of speech, and a grammatically correct example sentence.”

Blogger’s comment: So far, the software only checks 40 commonly misspelt English homophones, which makes the app targeted mostly at a specific level of writing. It is a wonderful start. Also, rather than bemoan the problems of English language usage nowadays that makes this software inevitable and invaluable, I’ll celebrate its presence and its ability to makes essay writing easier (especially for high school or undergraduate students too distracted by other things to proofread their work right). Of course it will eventually take a smart writer to properly use a software that merely points one to where one might want to take a second look in an essay. Like every spell-checker, the work will still come back to the writer to be sure of exactly what they intend to write. As a piece of utility however, it is a brilliant invention and a good start. I love it.

Jason Braun currently teaches English and is the Associate Editor of Sou’wester at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. He hosts “Literature for the Halibut” a weekly hour-long literary program on KDHX 88.1. He has published fiction, poetry, reported or been featured in The Riverfont Times, Prime Number, ESPN.com, Big Bridge, Sou’wester, The Evergreen Review, SOFTBLOW, The Nashville City Paper, Jane Freidman’s blog, and many more. His Paradise Lost Office App contextualizes John Milton’s epic poem for the cubicle crowd and is available at iTunes. He releases music under the moniker Jason and the Beast. He is a member of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE) and the Learning Disability Association of America (LDA).

The Origin of “Oyinbo”

I have come across the most convincing story yet of the source of the word oyinbo. Of all the previous stories about the source of the word, the current entry in Wikipedia makes use of cognates and probable historical anecdotes. See below:

it… means “white person” generally used in the country, which originates from Igbo Language . The first “White people” to settle in Nigeria as colonial masters were the English people. In Igbo language demonym takes the form ” onye + the place of origin” of the person, hence, and Igbo person is called ” Onye Igbo”. A Yoruba person is called ” Onye Yoruba”. A German is “onye Germany”. Thus the first white people were called “onye ocha” for singular and “ndi ocha” for plural meaning “white person and white people” respectively. This was because the Igbo people of those days did not know from where the white people came. Interaction between the Igbos and the white people resulted in the white people trying to refer to the Igbos with a name similar to what the Igbos called them, but there was problem in pronouncing Igbo words due to presence of double lettered alphabets which involve nasal pronunciation,in some of the consonants such as ‘ch’, ‘gb’, ‘gh’, ‘gw’, ‘kp’, ‘kw’, ‘nw’, ‘ny’, ‘sh’. These were not present in English language hence the difficulty in the white man’s effort in giving the Igbos similar demonym as the Igbo people had given to him, instead a name resulting from a mutilation of Igbo words was produced “Oyi ibo’ instead of ” onyi igbo’ meaning ‘Igbo person’ just as he ‘the white man’ was called ‘ onye ocha’ meaning ‘white person’. It was this ‘oyi ibo’ that the Igbos later started referring to as ‘white person’ in a way of mocking the white man for his inability in saying “Onye Igbo”. This would later be adopted by other Southern Nigerian tribes as the standard name for the white man and coupled with dialect variance one obtains different pronunciations such as “Oyinbo’ in Yoruba and other western Nigerian tribes…

As a linguist, this makes more sense than any other story that breaks the word down as “oyin + bo” or any other permutation.

Will Yoruba Survive?

To @MrBankole, who asked:

I’d like a brief comment, if you don’t mind… (on) your thoughts about the future of (Yoruba’s?) cultural legacies and how they interact with evolving mediums of expression. Do you think they’ll erode…or will they be preserved? Living, breathing, or digital fossils.

I’ve heard many versions of this question before, but this one is about whether the new means of communication (with their inherent tendency for language imperialism) will (or not) send Yoruba, or perhaps any other language with such limited use off the map completely.

I believe, of course, that they will survive. The question however (always) is “in which form?”

The Yoruba language lives today in Candomblé, a religion in Brazil, and in Cuba as Santería. Some of the cultures of the old Gold Coast have remained in Jamaica and some other parts of the Caribbean in sometimes recognizable bits, or sometimes in totally evolved forms. This is the inevitable fall-out of language and cultural transposition. As dead as Latin is, it still lives on in science and in the Catholic Church. The point is that even in the worst case scenario, there will still be a recognizable part of the language left.

So, if in a couple of hundred years, Yoruba survives only in this (electronic) medium through the use by those who remember particular registers from their own childhood and nothing more, we may be left only with that: a Yoruba customized for a medium and a particular kind of audience. An e-diolect, if you will. Over time, as it happened in Brazil and Cuba, the chasm will increase and the distance between the original Yoruba from root and the e-volved Yoruba that lives on in the medium will increase to perhaps an unbridgeable length, with few exceptions.

Or not. (We never really know. Language is dynamic and their survival/destruction is often subject to other issues than just mere technological advancements. Maybe a war will take place and destroy all Yorubas in Nigeria, and the only surviving bits of the language will be those spliced with English and all the other acquired languages we’ve imbibed.) But these are hypotheticals.

I don’t believe that the original Yoruba from the motherland/hinterlands will ever completely disappear from the earth (just like English never will as well). But I believe that all things being equal, they will evolve, differently in speed – of course, depending on their medium of transmission (and the types/number of people that use one kind over the other).

Thank you for the interaction, Lord Banks.

PS: The Speak Yoruba Day on Twitter is still March 1, 2013. It is a chance to showcase the facility of the mother tongue and its relevance to the 21st century.

“Emerging Aesthetics in Nigerian Literature”

As a symposium participant in an event at the Draper’s Hall, University of Ibadan, at the weekend to celebrate the work of Rotimi Babatunde, winner of the 2012 Caine Prize for African Writing, I made a few points regarding the distinguishing features of Rotimi’s work, and the opportunity it offers for emerging writing. More importantly, the way it conforms to the already established trends in great storytelling.

In craft, Bombay’s Republic distinguishes itself by being able to re-tell a story already told in a longer form in Biyi Bandele’s Burma Boy in a different form, and from a different angle. This is not an easy feat. As a contribution to history, the work also moves between fiction and real life in a way that is not only authentic, but also affecting. Like Eleshin Oba in Wole Soyinka’s famous Death and the King’s Horsemen, and Okonkwo in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart, the main character in Bombay’s Republic lived at a crossroads of a certain time in history and automatically assumed the perils and rewards of such serendipitous existence.

As a contribution to language, I made note of my most fascinating discovery, made close to the end of the story, that the author had not used quotation marks at all throughout the text of the short story. That I discovered this towards the end of the piece only added to the interesting point that unlike what prescriptive grammarians would have us believe, our brains usually process text in chunks rather than as individual pieces of written information. Quote marks, as good as they are, and as aesthetically pleasing their presence on the page might me, fade in significance if a story can still be told, brilliantly as was in this case, without any use for their now rather annoying presence.

The event was hosted by a Committee of Friends, including Yomi Ogunsanya, Ropo Ewenla, Benson Eluma, Iwalewa Olorunyomi, et al. Other participants included Sola Olorunyomi (Author of Fela: Afrobeat and the Imagined Continent), Benson Eluma, Tade Ipadeola, Niran Okewole, Jumoke Verissimo (Author of I Am Memory), Biyi Olasope, Remi Raji (President of the Association of Nigerian Authors, and poet), Ayodele Olofintuade, and Olisakwe Ukamaka Evelyn.

« Older Entries Newer Entries »